I am investigating the various platforms of social media that have begun to surround our world. Each day more are being created for the same or different reason. We as creatives use this platform to an advantage it allows us to connect with other creatives and promote our work. Such as Popular platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat e.g.

Instagram which is known for the largest photo sharing website. Was founded in 2010 by Kevin systom and Mike Krieger However, it was bought by Facebook in 2012 by founder Mark Zuckerberg for One billion dollars. There focus was to create an app based upon sharing videos and photos a crossed the world. As it began to grow with updates were added to the app Instagram story (similar to Snapchat), enabling users to produce live content, from this it has allowed Instagram to create more apps to allow the user to create better content such as boomerang (creates a gif) and Layout (Allows you to create collages). Instagram has over 600million active users, this is why the target audience had begun to expand into having 90 percent of the users under 35 years old. By Facebook being partnership owner of the social media Instagram earlier in 2016 they introduced business accounts which allowed followers to contact them through having a Facebook page. It has also added more advertisement through allowing different sponsors and brands advertise throughout the Instagram feed matched what they have liked or followed. Popular Brands such as coca cola, Vogue are included in this.

This platform is mainly focused on sharing photos and video with also the app continuously expanding with creating apps like layout and boomerang to improve the content for the users to post as well as starting to introduce the new feature which is live video.

Strengths – There are many strengths when using Instagram such as being able to share your post acrossed most media platforms such as Facebook and twitter, you can edit your photos or videos in the same place, easier to get more noticed in comparison with Facebook or YouTube by using hashtags throughout your posts, you can also direct message followers if you want to promote or just share something from most platforms. Another strength is it allows all of your posts to be shown throughout the website or app rather than other mediums like Facebook only show the most popular posts the same with twitter. This platform allows you to interact with other users unless wanted private for only friends to see rather than the public.Another strength within Instagram is you can create 3 different types of accounts here are some examples :

PersonalPortfolioBrandMagazine

Weaknesses – There are a few weaknesses in which are focused on limitation through only allowing to share or post through just a phone instead of using a computer. Another weakness is only allowing a one-minute video to be shared this is from a filmmaker’s point of view as I believe it is better to share it all in one place instead of having to only include a part of the footage. You can’t schedule your posts you have to be there at that moment to share something.

37 Interesting Instagram Stats For 2016 – Brandwatch

(Brandwatch, n.d.)

(Betters, 2017)

(BBC News, n.d.)

(Statista, n.d.)

(The Marketing Girl, n.d.)

YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees who were creating this for a video sharing website where you can see the views, upload and share it. However, YouTube wasn’t always just that it was originally designed as a dating app so then people that were single could record themselves and upload it and look for a partner. In 2006 it was then purchased by Google and from then on it has grown into the highest usage rate for social media through having over a billion users. It has started to become the new television of this generation, in the recent year’s careers have been created from various users via to them creating content whether that is recording yourself playing the latest video game or giving beauty tips many of these creators are becoming the new celebrity of this generation for example Swedish YouTuber Pewdiepie which has the highest rank of subscribers calculating over 50 million. Through using the google advertising placement AdSense this is enabling some of them to become millionaires.

The specialties for YouTube are focusing on the next big thing by using the main medium of video to enhance the users experience such as allowing 360-degree videos, live streams e.g.

Strengths –

As YouTube has become one of the most popular social medias the content has grown into having separate news or special TV segments posted onto this site it has almost become exclusivity to the users of YouTube. As well as YouTube growing even further into another channel called YouTube red although this is only accessible if you are located in the united states this still is a huge strength as by having this it has added another type of target audience for watching exclusive TV shows and films which is only created specifically for YouTube red such as Prank academy, Escape the night and The thinning. Another strength is that it enables you to share or upload your own content for public or personal use.

recommendations that’s either popular or you have watched based on recent historyTrending page (recommendations)

Weaknesses – There is the problem with only your videos being shown if you have got a high following of subscribers or views as this is what the platform is mainly based on. Your video will only be shown on the first page if it has the highest views, likes or subscribers. As YouTube is one of the leading social medias and becoming a creator is the latest thing to share content that means the competition is harder to gain subscribers. With having related videos from a creator’s perspective the viewer maybe become more interested towards in another competitions content rather than your own.

(Quora, 2014)

(Moreau, 2016)

(Youtube.com, n.d.)

(The Huffington Post, 2013)

Twitter, a social media which is known for the place for the 140 letters or less tweets on breaking news, celebrity feuds and general conversation e.g. Which was originally a project created by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone whilst at a podcasting website called Odeo the initial aim for the social media was to be a SMS messaging service. Twitter launched on March 21, 2006, with one of the founders Jack Dorsey sending the first tweet. As the data base began to grow twitter they started to introduce new concepts to this type of media which was allowing users to apply another users name to a message by using the @ key this became a popular way to use twitter with the popularity of that feature the company decided to add more updates to the platform such as hashtags this was away to categorise and add more communication between twitter users. Before another feature that is frequently used within the platform retweeting was available apparently users used to just type RT and then tagged the account that the post was originally from and as of 2010 it was officially added. From only having one first tweet to having around 317 million users a month twitter had grown into the 4th biggest social media platform a crossed the world.

Twitter has gained many strengths throughout the many years since 2006 through using the hashtags to create campaigns in which some have been successful such as the popular Christmas advert by Department store John Lewis with their 2015 advert man on the moon with over 52 thousand retweets with using the hashtag #manonthemoon. Another one of the strengths is the communication and creating fan bases between celebrities and their fans.Another strength is being able to catogrize trends across the platfrom with many using certain hashtags. As well as also knowing what the people you following are doing such as retweeting and if theres any other people you are following that may have liked the post it will show up like this :

Furthermore, there are some weaknesses within the social media platform such as the limitation of having only 140 lett
ers to tweet as sometimes within tweets the information
doesn’t come a crossed or make as much sense as for example if you posted on Instagram or Facebook as this allows you to have 2200 characters in Instagram and Facebook is unlimitless by allowing 63,206-character long.

The specialties for twitter is it has a community feel to it,can easily promote news or see what is trending in a country or place you may not be in allows you to connect with people you would never meet in real life which can be useful for networking within your career.

Search

Search for:

Text Widget

This is a text widget, which allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.